German Americans of Cleveland
Cleveland Press Articles
City Loses a Helpful Friend in Closing of German Paper
Editorial
Cleveland Press, May 31, 1954
Shutdown of the Waechter und Anzeiger, the city's last German language newspaper, is an unwelcome milestone along a road that reaches proudfy back into the days of the Cleveland's early growth and the beginnings of its greatness.
Cleveland always has been an important gathering place for the refugees from the endless political unrest of Germany.
All through the busy and productive decades of the late 19th Century, Germans outnumbered all others among the immigrants who came to Cleveland, and helped build it into a great and thriving city.
Throughout those years for more than a century now, Waechter und Anzeiger was the window through which these newcomers for their first glimpse and their first understanding of their new homeland.
It was a sturdy shoulder on which these uncertain newcomers could lean, a voice easily understood amid the strange tongues and the strange customs of a new land.
Its closing is another reminder that these days are over now, that this country, and this city, no longer will have the periodic invigoration of masses of energetic, earnest immigrants.
While the Germans and the others of the city's amazingly cosmopolitan population still cherish some of the customs of their homelands, its many tongues have become one.
This newspaper has played a significant and constructive part in the building of Cleveland.
Both its passing, and the reasons which brought it about, are regretted.
